Portfolio Pages

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Random finds - Bookmarks and Snail-mail

A couple of these I found as a "Blog of Note" on Blogger. One was a recommendation from the owner of my favorite bookstore when we were discussing such things.

Letters of Note - amazing bits of history, interest, kindness, charm in a medium that is vanishing. It makes me a little sad that letters as personal correspondence are becoming a thing only in the past.
Granted, I'm not a great letter-writer (I'm not referring to my sloppy penmanship), but I've written a fair number of letters in my day.
I'm also fascinated by historical letters and I've always been tickled to receive letters (hmmm - that probably relates a bit to why it so fun to receive blog-comments).
It was fun to decipher my late uncle's letters (that penmanship issue must run in the family) and see what was of interest to him and what was happening down south.
Anyway...Letters of Note - quite rightly a Blog of Note, I think.

Got a Secret you just gotta tell? Write it on a postcard and mail it to these folks: PostSecret.
This site is also fascinating. Charming, funny creepy; sometimes viewing it is fueled by morbid curiosity. It could be considered a guilty pleasure...reading other people's secrets - that they actually intended you to read!

This one was inspired by a book the owner of my favorite book store showed me.
Milk, Eggs, Vodka is the book. Being a master list-maker, I bought a copy from her - irresistible. Grocery List Collection is the website.
It's found grocery lists. The list that blew away or was left in the cart...these folks found it or someone sent it to them and they posted it online. No, really, take a look. It's interesting the notes folks make to themselves, or the things the kids add on - recipes - a peek into someone's grocery world and eating habits. There's interesting grocery facts, astoundingly poor spelling, familiar, "that could be me" spelling, and stuff that makes you go "Huh?!?", "Hmmmm", "WTH?", or "Oh, I need to add that to my list". The DH and I take the book with us sometimes when we go out for breakfast to read/puzzle at/laugh through a chapter of Found Grocery lists and the commentary.

Forgotten Bookmarks - This website was another Blog of Note, I think. I told the owner of my favorite bookstore about this website. She promptly showed me a "forgotten bookmark" she'd found earlier that day in used books someone had dropped off - The wrapper for a Pregnancy test. I kid you not.
Here's a forgotten bookmark I found in a used book I recently purchased:


Yep, a Hippo PostCard left behind in a Barbara Walker Book.
(I went on a bit of a Barbara Walker book-finding trek after the Sock Summit.)











The comments on the postcard are a bit ironic when you consider the book it was left within.